So
far in the campaign to win Harrogate and Karesborough for the Greens,
the hustings have been good natured and rather quiet affairs. That
seemed to be the way last Thursday's event at the Cedar Court Hotel
was going, until the subject of TTIP emerged. The Greens are
confident that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
proposals are bad – bad for business, bad for Britain and
particularly bad for the NHS. My assertion to this effect invoked a
flat denial from the Lib Dem candidate, and the cry of 'liar' from
someone in the audience.
So,
what's the story?
In
February this year, BBC Scotland revealed a leak from the EU
negotiations, purporting to show that NHS services are exempt from
the TTIP negotiations, currently being negotiated in great secrecy in
Brussels. Now, one person's leak is often another mischievous plant,
deliberately designed to misinform. This latter option is, I think,
the situation here.
The
leaked document has, in reality, been in the public domain since May
2014. So this is, in the words of War on Want, less of a news story
and more of a spin operation. It confirms that the position of the
NHS in the TTIP negotiations is worse than I described, the
government knows this, and is deliberately trying to misinform the
public to allay concerns. The whole rebuttal of the implications of
the 'leak' can be seen here
Rather
than being branded a liar, I should be applauded as a whistleblower!
